Dakani Night Scream

Dakani Night Scream was my character for the Sigil campaign. He was my first character using rules from the Book of Nine Swords. The Wizards of the Coast designers said that they were trying out earlier ideas for D&D Fourth Edition in Bo9S, and it’s pretty good. It has a very martial arts/Hong Kong action feel to it, which I don’t mind as I’m a huge fan of Feng Shui. Also, we used the “official” 3e Planescape setting information from planewalker.com, especially for the bladeling race description, as Dakani and his brother Tarusk were both bladelings.

I liked the idea of a bladeling – a Lawful Neutral one, but still tormented by the harshness of survival in their Acheron home. Unusually for me, I didn’t do a character history and personality writeup. I wanted him to be a bit mysterious, and in this gaming group we’re pretty much full disclosure – everyone reads everyone else’s character sheets, there’s no information compartmentalization. Also, since Chuck and I planned to be brothers, and we didn’t do much pre-collaboration, it was best to just roll with it.

Dakani was a rogue/swordsage who specialized in the Shadow Hand and Setting Sun schools. His best ability was the Island of Blades stance, which allowed him to flank whenever he and an ally were in melee with a creature (regardless of positioning). This meant he was flanking about 90% of the time – I had plans for followup combos that would make sure he had a flank buddy or could attack invisibly, but they never became necessary.

We played this campaign every other week for 9 months, and he got to level 10. (Who really uses all that epic level crap really?)

Here’s Dakani at each level. That last page is things to possibly take or buy, not actual abilities he has (in D&D 3e, you need to keep a build plan at all times, unfortunately). Feel free and unleash him on your PCs as a villain!